Pierre Denis

“ In 1914, foreigners were 310 per 1,000 of the entire population of Mendoza: a larger proportion than for the whole country. The immigrants going straight to Mendoza from the ports numbered 12,000 in 1911, and 15,000 in 1912; almost as much as for the province of Santa Fé, and more than for the province of Córdoba. Thus Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm which Argentina has for the imagination of Europe. When we examine a chart of the population of South America, we notice that the oases of Cuyo contain the only important groups of European population at any distance from the coast. ”

“ Below the small number of steep furrows which the glaciers have carved, and usually up to the top of the mountain, there spreads what has been called, very expressively, "the zone of rubbish." In this the winter's snows, fretted by the sun in that clear atmosphere, form those multitudes of narrow pyramids which the Argentinians compare to processions of white-robed pilgrims. The underlying rock is rarely visible. ”

“ By a singular anomaly the Far West of North America, which sprang up half a century ago, tends to withdraw more and more from the influence of the eastern States, which provided it with capital and immigrants, while the Far West of Argentina, which is just as old as the east and by no means a creation of the east, since it developed in isolation and freedom, and was already adult and rich when they came into contact, has nevertheless fallen into complete dependence upon the east in the course of a few years. ”

“ The oases represent only a limited portion of them. It would be impossible to imagine a more striking contrast than that of the freshness and life of the oases compared with the surrounding desert. Screens of poplars shelter them from the zonda. The water runs along trenches paved with round pebbles under the spreading vines, at the foot of which, to economize water and space, lucerne is sown. Each garden feeds a family. Near the raw-brick houses there are large earthenware vessels, as tall as a man, in which the corn is kept. The hammering of the cooper fills the air. ”

“ We have to come down to the close [Pg 37] of the nineteenth century to find men reaching the limits which nature has set to colonization, and mapping out their domain. It is not until then that La Rioja ceases to compete with Mendoza, or Catamarca with Tucumán. While large industrial enterprises develop at Mendoza and Tucumán, strong centres of urban life arise, the population increases, and immigrants stream in, the oases of the interior scarcely change. Their population does not keep its level. Life has an archaic character that one finds nowhere else in Argentina. ”

“ Colonization does not in these parts correspond with the division of property. Not only does the farmer not become the owner of the soil, but he does not live on it permanently; he is a veritable nomad. His house has a temporary look that strikes one at the first glance. The area cultivated is almost stable, if the region is considered as a whole. But cultivation passes periodically from one section to another, and its removals cause sudden alterations or crises in the railway traffic and the development of the urban centres. ”

“ It has for ages lived upon its own resources; each population-group has its horizon definitely limited; and the complex action of the environment upon man, and of man upon the country, has proceeded in each district rather on the lines of an isolated and impassioned dialogue between the two. It is quite different in Argentina. There, many of the facts which we have to record consist in an expansion of the population, a spread of methods of exploitation from zone to zone of the country, and the influence upon colonization of commerce and of the varying needs of the markets of the world. ”

“ The damp forest of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the forest-workers on the west of the Paraná eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the breeders, in the yerbales and obrajes of Misiones, the use of dried or "jerked" meat (carne seca) , which is brought some distance, has remained the common practice, as it is in most parts of tropical America. On the other hand, there is now developing in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an original kind, quite distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is because Misiones is a province apart in Argentina. ”

“ Thus the history of colonization cannot be separated from the traffic in land. The special features of this traffic in the Pampean region—its concentration at Buenos Aires; the creation of a land-market resembling a stock market; the practice of selling on the instalment plan, which enables small capitalists to enter the market; the repeated transfers of pieces of land which the buyers have never seen and which they know only from plans—are one of the most original aspects of modern Argentina. ”

“ What is even more admirable than the ingenuity of the vallista in utilizing the natural resources is the minute detail of the water-rights. It seems as if the vallista is even more cunning in protecting himself from his neighbour than in dealing with nature. The water-customs of these Andean valleys are worth an extensive study. The water does not belong to the State, and is not used by concession from the State. It is private property. The owner uses or abuses it as he pleases on the lands which he has selected. A man may be poor in land and rich in water, which he accordingly sells. ”

“ The expansion of breeding in the west between 1880 and 1890 was facilitated by the low market price of cattle at that time. Breeding has the advantage over farming of not needing so large a staff, but it requires a larger capital. Of the crops, assuming that the conditions of soil and climate are equally favourable, wheat is better than maize for colonization, because the preparing of the soil and the harvest can be done more speedily, and the same number of hands can plant a larger area with wheat than with maize. ”

“ One of the most frequented, leading from the sub-Andean tablelands to San Julian, follows the Santa Cruz valley. When the land was cut up, there was no reason to foresee these movements, and nothing was done to facilitate them. The roads cross the ranches, which are compelled to allow it. It is a serious burden for some of them, unless they can make a profit out of their situation on the road by hiring pasture for the flocks as they pass.
The Andean zone itself is still mainly pastoral, but it is nevertheless far more varied and richer in possibilities of development than the tableland. ”

“ In the middle of the island are low, marshy lands. The irregularity of the alluvial deposits causes marked undulations in the whole region of the river, and everywhere gives rise to alternate beds of clay and sand. Below Rosario the river gradually loses its power. The islands become more stable and flatter. Clumps of willow and spiny ceibos (Erythrina cristagalli) still cover the edges of them, and sometimes spread over the interior. But as the climate is now less humid, the vegetation fixes the soil less firmly, and the wind becomes the chief sculptor of the landscape. ”

“ The lucerne is made up in bales and exported by rail to Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires. The economic life of the agricultural oasis of the Rio Negro is no more connected with that of the pastoral tableland than is life on the Chubut. Neither sheep nor cattle are fattened on the Rio Negro. It is a curious contrast to the spectacle offered by the Andean regions of western and north-western Argentina, where for generations there has been a close association between the breeding industry of the scrub and the fattening on the lucerne-farms. ”

“ The harvest is often done with machines that peel and pack the wheat, and the workers are not compelled, as they are at Santa Fé, to wait for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahía Blanca began in 1906.
The displacement of breeding by farming is less thorough than in the maize belt. Oats, sown about the beginning of autumn, serve for fodder. ”

“ The men who clear the land in the lucerne belt have mostly been recruited in the district of the old colonies of Santa Fé, where the new generation had begun to feel the pinch. The crops which they raise during the four or five years of their lease are chosen without any idea of sparing lands which they are not to keep. Wheat succeeds wheat, and the first and last crop is often flax. The proportion of flax is lower only in the southern part of the lucerne belt. In the Buenos Aires province the colonist grows lucerne on his own account, either to sell as dry fodder or for breeding or fattening. ”

“ The whole life and wealth of the arid provinces of north-western Argentina depend upon irrigation; the water-supply definitively settles the sites of human establishments. The water resources are irregularly distributed. They are especially abundant in the south (San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafael) , where the torrents of the Cordillera are fed by the glaciers, and on the outer fringe of the hills above the Chaco, at the foot of Aconcagua, which gathers masses of cloud and rain on its flanks (Tucumán) . ”

“ The cattle of the Llanos move a good deal. There are certain irregular migrations, and others that are periodic or connected with the seasons. Everywhere on the fringe of the Sierra the cattle remain in the ravine and on the foot-hills during the winter. In the summer they return of themselves to their querencia on the plain. The irregular migrations are due to scarcity of water or pasture. Driven by hunger, the beasts travel a long distance of their own accord. They mingle with other herds, sometimes so far from the ranches where they were born that no one recognizes their mark. ”

“ The industrial prosperity of eastern North America provides a safe home market for the farmers of the west, and relieves them of the need of exporting their produce. Moreover, the Atlantic tablelands, the original centres of population, where the first generations of colonists lived on land that was often poor, have seen the gradual formation of reserves of labour and capital which were afterwards used in colonizing the west. The east sifted, in a sense controlled, the influence of modern Europe in the colonization of the United States. ”

“ In the north the moist winds come from the east; the rains lessen as they pass westward. The clays, capped with black soil, of Buenos Aires are æolian deposits, brought by the wind from the desolate steppes which close the Pampa to the west, fixed and transformed by the vegetation of a moister region. In the south, on the contrary, the rains come from the Pacific, and the fluvio-glacial alluvial beds of the Patagonian tableland are evidence of copious reserves of moisture in the Andes; but the arid climate in which the waters have left them has made its mark upon their surface. ”

“ I may add that no statistics would enable one to solve the problem which Argentina in 1920 presents to an observer. Has the European War merely retarded the economic evolution of the country, or has it given that evolution a new direction? Will or will not the relations which Argentina is now resuming with the rest of the world be of the same character as the pre-war relations? ”

“ It contributes by its own resources and work to the task of colonization and the supply of manufactured articles to the agricultural and pastoral districts. It is, finally, a luxurious city, with every opportunity for the men who have grown rich by the rise in the price of lands to spend their income, and providing pleasure for the country folk who come up occasionally, tired of their laborious, rough and solitary existence. ”

“ This land of customs and traditions is also a land of lively movement. The briskness of the traffic is primarily due to continuous exchange between the various zones of the mountainous district. This large trade, so scattered that the railways could not dream of satisfying its needs, is carried, in the old fashion, on the backs of mules. The lively aspect of the roads between the tableland and the lower valleys of the region, the brisk interchange of goods between zones with different climates, is one of the common features of life on the Andes. ”